Re: ::scr What porn sites don't want you to know..

[jonah <jonah@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2002, Simon Batistoni wrote:

> On 11/10/02 12:10 +0100, Simon Wistow wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 09:31:57PM -1100, bill_0671n38@xxxxxxxxxxx said:
> > >    YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO RECEIVE A FREE MEMBERSHIP !
> > >    NO STRINGS ATTACHED ! That's right...
> > >    Access these sites now before you need to pay.. CLICK HERE
> > >    or visit http://www.freetrialz.info/~allfree/?email=scr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > 
> > Yay! Pr0n Spam
> > 
> > Grr, too ill to turn this into a thread.
> 
> Ah what the hell...
> 
> Apparently, as much as 1/3 of mail being sent today is spam. One in
> three damn messages. So, I have a couple of random questions:
> 
> 1) Are other people noticing an increase in spam? 

Judging from other people's complaints, I must get hardly any email spam
at all. I get about one or two spam mails a day, usually for remortgagaes
or other loans, easily few enough for me to deal with without resorting to
something like spamassasin. I mean, obviously I would if I felt I needed
to, but I just don't.

I'm not sure why this is; I'm careful about where I put my email address,
but then so are other who suffer from spam, and the address is also
plastered all over various public mailing list archives. I do have an old
lineone email addy I use for situations which could result in spam, eg
registering freeware etc. However, that is the only address on which I
receive spam, and like I say, only one or two a day.

I hope that doesn't sound too smug.

> 2) Why? Who actually *buys* this shit? Well, that's actually a more
> complex question, so here goes.
> 
> There must be a critical mass, at which it becomes economically viable
> to send spam, 

True enough, but it's not just bulk spammers who've figured out the
numbers that spam, it's also naive or clueless marketing people for more
legit companies. These people (fresh out of a marketing degree, I'd wager)
see the direct and personal nature of email and genuinely think that it's
a good way to advertise to their customers. 

* jonah reads to the end of the mail he's replying to.

Ah, yeah, they are fuckwits.
 
> So you only need one sucker in a mailing of 25,000 to bite, and you've
> made money. 2 suckers and it's looking attractive, 100 suckers and
> you're laughing.

Well, yeah, say you're selling penis enlargement pills[0] or something at,
say, Ten dollars a pop. Career bulk spammers have list of hundereds of
thousands or even millions of email addresses (and that's before we even
look at hotmail blanketing). So, say we have 500,000 addresses. Even if
your hit rate is 0.1 percent, that's 500 respondants, and five thousand
bucks. For sending an email. You can see why they do it.

It's worrying, though, looking at those figures. Due to its persistence
and prevalence, I'd always imagined spamming to be even more profictable
than that, which suggests that either they have a higher hit rate or they
have *really* massive lists of addresses[0].
 
> But even so, who is actually attracted by the same old same old "low
> mortgage rates", "earn $50,000 a month working from home", "hot girls
> with wild horses", "take one pill and halve your bodyweight" bollocks?

The same people who get duped by nigerian email fraudsters, they who
forward dire virus alerts warning of stolen screen names and eaten hard
drives? The cynic in me keeps trying to persuade me that there are far
more gullible people out there than  we necessarily imagine. Arg.

> the unifying theme is desperation. The desperation of loneliness and
> sexual frustration (porn), the desperation of financial troubles (get
> rich quick, low rate loans), and the society-manufactured desperation
> of being unhappy with your appearance (cosmetic surgery, magic weight
> loss).

I think you've hit the nail on the head, here.
 
> So the spam industry is making most of its money by preying on
> desperate people, and inconveniencing everyone else at the same
> time. I just love human nature.

Human nature isn't the term to use. The way people are now is just not
natural. The international capitalist system has twisted the human psyche
and people's slef-iamge and sense of ahppiness and fulfilment through the
fashion, advertising and porn[3] industries. But that's a rant for another
day.

Without capitalism, there would be no spam. Some would argue that there'd
be no internet either, so I suppose that's a moot point.

> (This does, of course, not include the spams I get from misguided
> businesses with whom I've dealt once, and who now think that
> reappraising me of their services every week will make me like
> them. They're just fuckwits, rather than parasites).

I wonder how long it takes them to realise that spam on less than bulk
scales just is not effective? Does anyone ever respond to these misguided
companies to point out how annoying the spam is?

-- 
sun-earther matthew jonah jones of huddersfield

[0] Why do I never get these spams? Everyone else does. They must know. :)

[1] Tangent: if the legal p2p hacking bill[2] goes through the US
legislature, could you legally copyright your email address and either
hack or get a l337 haXX0r chum to hack anyone who spammed you? Possibly
with a view to removing your address from the list? Heh, what a daft idea

[2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27334.html

[3] Something I saw mentioned in passing on another list:

alt.binaries
-> www
-> mosaic / graphical web browsers
-> faster modems
-> mpeg / quicktime
-> broadband
-> "Pronography drives technology" - discuss.